Serious Post 3a
Well , here I am procrastinating again...
Dave Dobbyn tickets are all booked and so is accommodation so I can't wait. I love Kaikoura, but Dave Dobbyn playing in Kaikoura and us staying in a backpackers with 2 spas and a pool and a free continental breakfast...That's what I'm talking about.
On Thursday I am meeting the girl I was looking for at the start of this blog for a coffee...it's so crazy and yet so cool. I was really surprised when I got her email. I am excited...But really nervous. It's been a long time...Lots has changed.
Watched a video of one of my soci lectures yesterday and got reminded of a fact that shocked me both the first and second times I heard it. ..We hear so often that at least 6million Jews were killed during the Nazi regime...Yes that is a massive number, incomprehensibly big. But when you take into account that there were only 9million Jews in Europe at the time it is just insane. 2 3rds of all European Jews were killed. That is one and half times the entire population of New Zealand. Of the 3million who survived, the vast majority lived in unoccupied areas...So they were very nearly successful in exterminating these people. I never knew how close they came! How did it happen, I mean I kind of do know but its still just unbelievable. It is so sad. When I was younger it seemed so long ago...It was history after all. When I went to the wailing wall as a twelve year old and I heard that maybe more than 6million people died, it was sad but it still felt so distant. Now I get a little older, hopefully a little wiser and I am just beginning to realise how recent lots of this history was. Things which seem to be in the past, are still so raw...and I think they have the right to be.
Dave Dobbyn tickets are all booked and so is accommodation so I can't wait. I love Kaikoura, but Dave Dobbyn playing in Kaikoura and us staying in a backpackers with 2 spas and a pool and a free continental breakfast...That's what I'm talking about.
On Thursday I am meeting the girl I was looking for at the start of this blog for a coffee...it's so crazy and yet so cool. I was really surprised when I got her email. I am excited...But really nervous. It's been a long time...Lots has changed.
Watched a video of one of my soci lectures yesterday and got reminded of a fact that shocked me both the first and second times I heard it. ..We hear so often that at least 6million Jews were killed during the Nazi regime...Yes that is a massive number, incomprehensibly big. But when you take into account that there were only 9million Jews in Europe at the time it is just insane. 2 3rds of all European Jews were killed. That is one and half times the entire population of New Zealand. Of the 3million who survived, the vast majority lived in unoccupied areas...So they were very nearly successful in exterminating these people. I never knew how close they came! How did it happen, I mean I kind of do know but its still just unbelievable. It is so sad. When I was younger it seemed so long ago...It was history after all. When I went to the wailing wall as a twelve year old and I heard that maybe more than 6million people died, it was sad but it still felt so distant. Now I get a little older, hopefully a little wiser and I am just beginning to realise how recent lots of this history was. Things which seem to be in the past, are still so raw...and I think they have the right to be.
posted by Simona at
4:23 PM
10 Comments:
This is such a good recognition of what happened, thank you.
I have often thought too "How did it happen? Where were the consciences of the guards, doctors, drivers, cooks leadership! How could so many people work together to perpetrate such a crushing, obscene, cruel destruction of so many people for so long!"
History? ........it was happening when I was born.
By
Elizabeth, at 5:31 PM
I know what you mean...it's so hard to understand how it happened, how the world let it happen. It is so scary that things like this can happen, that so many people could be convinced of something so sick, or to be controlled and afraid enough to do nothing...I can't even make it real in my mind. On a selfish level, I am glad that I can't
history...I know, it's funny how at school anything you learn in history is so long ago. you get a wee bit older and suddenly you realise this stuff happened SO recently. Terrifyingly recently
By
Simona, at 6:26 PM
It is a deeper issue that one first realises.
According to one report, the 20th Century's wars, revolutions and violent conflicts have killed about 35.7 Million people.
Worse than that, the same report estimates that the number of people killed by totalitarian or extreme authoritarian governments (democide) already exceeds that for all civil and international wars. The report brings this figure to 119.4 Million people.
That's a grand, 20th-C total of 155.1 Million people.
There is another separate report, with slightly different figures (only up to 1987), that is nicely formatted here.
The homepage of that very useful site is this.
You know the scary thing? The figures reveal that less people were killed in the whole remainder of human history combined than in the 20th Century alone.
"God is dead," Nietsche's madman used to say, sometimes I wonder how they couldn't tell.
By
Iain, at 11:35 PM
Hey, whoa!
You WENT to the wailing wall?
Ooh ooh, do a post about that!
I would love to go to Jerusalem and Israel/Palestine one day.
Despite the fact that Kingdom of Heaven, the movie, sucked and had no real ending and was pointlessly violent, there was one line that captured my heart. He arrived at Jerusalem and said to an old man, approximately,
"Where is the place that Christ was crucified?"
Wow, imagine being able to ask that question. To stand where Abraham, Moses and Christ himself stood.
Anyway, I shall sidetrack your post no longer, perhaps you could tell a little about your trip in another one?
By
Iain, at 9:02 AM
Iain those are some UNBELIEVABLE figures (in the I actually do believe them kind of way). I can't believe how much the human race are stuffing up. The twentieth century is either going to be looked back on as a nightmare in history classes or there will be no existence to look back on it from.
It's so sad, and makes you feel so helpless. Sometimes you get a flash of those people as individuals...Those 155.1 million people were just like us. They had lives,families, almost all of them would have been grieved for for years. They would have been afraid, cried, laughed, told bad jokes. I am glad that God did not give us the ability to comprehend that on such a huge scale.
I had a moment of realisation just after September 11th when I was kind of able to see those people who died as individuals...imagine their fear and their pain. Imagine their last words and their last emotions. It made me cry intensely for hours. What if we had the ability to see those 155.1 million people as our mothers, our best friends, our workmates and imagine the fear that went through them before they died, when they realised they would not see the people they loved again, when they realised they had lost...all I can think is thank goodness that we can't. Thanks goodness that our minds won't really allow that, thank goodness that he protects us from that.
By
Simona, at 10:53 AM
oh yeah...and I will do a post about my trip...in brief it was a pilgrimage to Greece Turkey and Israel...went to the main Holyland sights...and did the journey of Paul (or some of it). I will try to write a post about it soon!! It was incredible. I wish I had been a little older and understood a bit more where I was on a deeper level,but there are always wishes but its only details, I was incredibly blessed to be able to go there
By
Simona, at 10:56 AM
Yeah, occasionally I think about death. As Westerners, it seems to be our last taboo. As Don Carson pointed out (Paul relayed it to me), we can talk about the pros and cons of sex, but we can't discuss death.
Death, the final frontier.
I can think about death. I can play violent games, watch violent movies, view gruesome news articles. But you hit something on the head for me... what goes through one's mind before death?
Imagine all the fear, joy and intense thoughts that would run through a mind that knew it was going to end. It is that moment that you look back upon your life to see if you find yourself wanting.
As for me, this wonderful & moving song sums up what I want people to say about me.
Let It Be Said Of Us
Let it be said of us that the Lord was our passion,
That with gladness we bore every cross we were given;
That we fought the good fight, that we finished the course
Knowing within us the power of the risen Lord.
Chorus:
Let the cross be our portion and the Lord be our song
By mercy made holy, By the Spirit made strong
Let the cross be our glory and the Lord be our song,
'Til the likeness of Jesus be through us made known,
Let the cross be our glory, and the Lord be our song.
Let it be said of us we were marked with forgiveness,
We were known by our love and delighted in meekness;
We were ruled by His peace, heeding unity's call,
Joined as one body, That Christ might be seen of all.
Now I only need to achieve it.
By
Iain, at 10:50 PM
Iain, great song! Who wrote it!!
By
Karen, at 1:24 PM
That is a great song Iain. So hard to get to that point or even really to strive for it but that is exactly what we should want said at our funerals, written on our grave stones. My mum went to a Salvation army funeral once of a young guy and she was so impressed. She thought people could have become christians through that service...THAT is what I want. If people start to get to know God at my funeral, if it leads people to heaven, it will be worth whatever I went through to get there.
People are afraid to talk about death, unless it is in a gruesome and depressing kind of teenage way. It's weird when it is something entirely universal. We all face it and yet nobody is willing to discuss it until it is happening? NO WONDER it is such a traumatic experience for so many people!!
THere is a book called Secret Sacrament...I know Sharyn just told you to read other Sherryl Jordan books but this is the one you should read first...we both agree. Infact all read it. The way it deals with death is so beautiful, I think that is the reality of death...read it and you shall know what i mean!!!
By
Simona, at 2:12 PM
Karen, I believe it was written by a guy called Steve Fry. I encountered it through the Promise Keepers male conferences.
The music is as good as the lyrics, just not as meaningful ;)
If I'm geeky enough I'll make an MP3 recording of myself and stick it on my blog. Don't count on it though :P
It's worth teaching music teams. I'm getting tired of all these happy clappy "Jesus is my boyfriend" songs. That's what impressed me by a Catholic mass I attended some months ago, the deep theology in the songs (sermon was rubbish, however).
Simona, yeah, I tried to locate that book today. I'll try another library tomorrow perhaps.
By
Iain, at 10:26 PM
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